China’s war on pollution and goals to lower carbon emissions are noteworthy as the United States takes a back seat in the global energy transition. Cleaner air and low carbon efforts in China could significantly change the country’s environmental health story and contribute to global efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions. However, China’s energy reforms look less green now than they seemed after Paris in 2015. While China’s rate of increase in CO₂ emissions has slowed and the share of renewables in its energy mix continues to grow, the Chinese government’s pursuit of clean air along its east has shifted more polluting and water-intensive coal-fired power development into the country’s west. To continue to lead the way in this “Asian Century,” China must further incorporate water-saving reforms into its energy and environment plans.

The 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, released on January 29, mentions climate change as a threat that is “likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.” The report features new topics such as election interference and threats to economic competitiveness while still including continuing threats such as cyber espionage and attacks, terrorism, and climate change. As a statement from Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Daniel R. Coats, for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the assessment provides an overview of the national security threats facing the nation.

Doula Village lies 55 kilometers (34 miles) northeast of New Delhi on a flat expanse of Uttar Pradesh farmland close to the Hindon River. Until the 1980s Doula Village’s residents, then numbering 7,000, and its farmers and grain merchants, thrived on land that yielded ample harvests of rice, millet, and mung beans. The bounty was irrigated with clean water transported directly from the river, or with the sweet groundwater drawn from shallow wells 7 meters (23 feet) deep.

The unabated growth of natural resource consumption raises risks that we will outstrip the capacities of ecosystems and governance institutions. At the same time, to achieve important global goals related to poverty alleviation, public health, equity and economic development such as those embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we will simultaneously need more resources and better management of natural resources everywhere.

“For the longest time we thought that water was forever renewable and that it would always be there,” said Gloria Steele, Acting Assistant Administrator for Asia with USAID, at a recent Wilson Center event on water security in High Asia. “We now know that is not the case, and we need to protect it and manage it effectively.”